Many organizations operate in highly regulated fields of business. One industry which is highly regulated is the financial services industry. For example, in a brokerage company, many of the employees of the brokerage company are required to have one or more licenses in order to engage in the activities required by their jobs. Depending on a particular individual's job within the organization an individual may need to have passed a number of different tests and hold a number of different licenses. Examples of some regulatory compliance licenses in the brokerage industry are the Series 7, Series 26, Series 27 etc.
When a new employee is hired by a brokerage company, the brokerage company is required by various regulations to conduct a number of different investigations in connection with the new employee's background and criminal history. These regulations are in some cases set forth by one or more different governmental agencies, and can further be required by statute, and additional requirements can be mandated by various non-governmental, or quasi-governmental agencies, and additionally organizations may further implement additional compliance type processes above and beyond those required by various different external organizations.
Much of the discussion herein is directed to the compliance requirements which a brokerage company must comply with. However, it should be recognized that large organizations can now provide for a multi-faceted range of services, including banking, mortgage brokerage, investment banking, and the brokerage of a range of different types of securities. Hence much of the discussion herein will refer to an organization generally as opposed to specifically referring to a brokerage company.
The range of different regulations which an organization must follow is vast. In the past, many organizations used a range of different systems to comply with the applicable regulations, and to implement processes and business rules which were intended to provide for compliance with the requirements of the myriad of different regulatory requirements. In the past these systems were typically implemented using a range of different computer systems and manual processes. In the past, in order to understand an organization's present state with regard to complying with the vast array of different requirements, typically a number of different departments in the organization would need to coordinate searching and reviewing a number of different databases, and paper files. Further, in order to insure individuals within the organization were taking appropriate actions to provide for compliance with various regulations, a number of improvised and frequently manual processes were implemented. In some circumstances these different processes were not well coordinated, and they frequently required access to the same information, but these processes would work off of separate databases, and electronic files, and physical files.
Further complicating the situation is the fact that the regulations frequently change and such changes would then require an assessment of which of these disparate processes would need to be modified or update in order to comply with the changes in the regulations.